What is the Paleo Diet?

Paleo is a contraction of paleolithic, which refers to the Paleolithic era in history, which was a period from about 2.5 million to 10,000 years ago. During this time period, humans grouped together into small, roaming societies and developed simple tools to hunt and fish with.

The idea behind the Paleo Diet is to “eat how our ancient ancestors did”–a diet mainly consisting of fish, grass-fed meats, eggs, vegetables, fruit, fungi, roots, and nuts. That’s why it’s also called the caveman diet, the stone age diet, and the hunter-gatherer diet.

The foods excluded from the Paleo Diet are grains, legumes (peanuts, various types of beans, and chickpeas) , dairy products, potatoes, refined salt, refined sugar, and processed oils (trans fats, as well as refined vegetable oils like canola, safflower, and sunflower oil).

As you can see, it’s an inherently high-protein, low-carbohydrate, high-fat type of diet, and has you eating a ton of animals and animal products.

If that sets off alarm bells in your head, warning of impending heart attacks or worse, hold your horses. We’re going to address the health aspects of the Paleo Diet in a minute, but first, let’s start with a quick review of its theoretical foundations.

Why Should We Eat Like Cavemen?

That’s the first question I wondered when I heard about the Paleo Diet.

Who cares how our ancient ancestors ate?

Well, the Paleo enthusiast would reply, for millions of years (before the Age of the Big Mac), us humans were hunter-gatherers. We had no agriculture, grocery stores, or ways to store and process food. We had to eat nuts, wild plants, and fresh meats. And, he will proclaim, we were much healthier back then–no arthritis, no cancer, no osteoporosis, and no heart disease. Thus, he will conclude, we should eschew modern dietary habits and return to our roots.

Well, while ancient humans may not have been as healthy as some people think, the idea still has an immediate appeal. With disease exploding over the last century, something is deeply wrong with how modern humans are living, and diet is a primary culprit.

But is a return to the Stone Age the answer?

Well, the first problem with the theory of the Paleo Diet is the assumption that just because a dietary behavior or method of food processing is more recent, it’s automatically worse than the ancestral model.

Our prehistoric forebears had one thing in mind, every day: survival. They ate whatever they could get their hands on, including each other sometimes. (Uh, is human flesh Paleo-approved?) The point is their food choices weren’t always optimal, and if we were transported back to the Paleolithic times, we would be smart to decline a dinner invitation.

Although it doesn’t have much bearing on the actual dietary protocols themselves, I found it slightly ironic that he Paleolithic humans didn’t follow the Paleo Diet.

The historical angle of the Paleo Diet is based on a set of findings by its founder, Dr. Loren Cordain, and other researchers, which proposes that humans during the Paleolithic era were primarily hunter-gatherers, with an emphasis on the hunting.

This paper is an important piece of the scientific underpinnings of the Paleo Diet, and is, in turn, based on the flawed Ethnographic Atlas, a database on many cultural aspects of 1167 societies.

Primate ecologist Katherine Milton wrote an insightful paper on the matter, and here are a few highlights:

The sources of data for the Ethnographic Atlas are mostly from the 20th century. We’ve since learned that some societies coded as hunter-gathers weren’t exclusively hunter-gatherers.

Some of the authors that helped compiled the Atlas were sloppy in their data collection. Furthermore, most of the researchers were male, and much of the collection and processing done by women was likely mis- or underreported.

The hunter-gatherers included in the Atlas were modern-day humans, not people living in the primitive conditions of our distant past. The wide variety of dietary behaviors seen don’t fall into a nice pattern that we can emulate. Furthermore, most of the hunter-gatherer societies lived off vegetable foods–an emphasis on hunting was rare.

A study conducted by the University of Calgary found that the diet of ancient Africans (going back as far as 105,000 years) may have been based on the cereal grass sorghum. (Remember, grains are a big no-no in Paleo ideology).

Making a Case for the Paleo Diet

“With readily available modern foods, The Paleo Diet mimics the types of foods every single person on the planet ate prior to the Agricultural Revolution (a mere 333 generations ago). These foods (fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, and seafood) are high in the beneficial nutrients (soluble fiber, antioxidant vitamins, phytochemicals, omega-3 and monounsaturated fats, and low-glycemic carbohydrates) that promote good health and are low in the foods and nutrients (refined sugars and grains, trans fats, salt, high-glycemic carbohydrates, and processed foods) that frequently may cause weight gain, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and numerous other health problems. The Paleo Diet encourages dieters to replace dairy and grain products with fresh fruits and vegetables – foods that are more nutritious than whole grains or dairy products.”

Despite his revisionist version of how our ancestors ate, it seems like a pretty sensible way to eat, no?

It excludes added sugars, which function as “empty calories.” Diets high in added sugars are often deficient in various micronutrients, because the foods high in such sugars usually have little nutritious value.

Another study, conducted by the University of Lund, found that the Paleo Diet was better for type 2 diabetics than a traditional “diabetes diet” in terms of improving glycemic control (the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar levels) and cardiovascular risk factors.

So, clearly the Paleo Diet has its merits. But the problems with the Paleo Diet begin when we dive deeper into its dogma.

The Problems With Paleo

The first big problem with Paleo is the stance that one singular way of eating is superior to all others.

The longest living populations on the planet are the peoples of Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; and the Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California–the “Blue Zones,” as these geographical locations have been labeled.

The point is while it’s tempting to conclude that the diets of “Blue Zoners” are the best way to achieve optimal health, it would be erroneous to do so. There are too many other non-dietary factors that contribute to longevity. The same can be said for the Paleo Diet.

The second big problem with the Paleo ideology is not what it has you eat, but what it has you avoid.

By following the Paleo Diet strictly, you miss out on potential benefits from foods like dairy, legumes, and whole grains, and the reasons given for avoiding such foods are scientifically flawed.

For instance…

Dairy products are a good source of calcium, protein, and vitamin D. Potassium, magnesium, zinc, and several other vitamins. Research has shown that dairy can improve bone health, muscle mass and strength, and even weight management. Now, lactose intolerance is fairly prevalent and people can get these nutrients in other ways, but for those that do fine with dairy, it’s a highly nutritious food.

It’s worth noting that I’m a bit concerned with the quality of run-of-the-mill dairy here in the States due to the poor health of many of the dairy cows and the artificial hormones many are given that find their way into the milk. These issues aren’t part of the Paleo argument against dairy, though, which is simply that our ancient ancestors didn’t eat dairy so neither should we.

The bottom line is antinutrients found in whole grains and legumes are not a problem unless your diet is devoid of nutritious foods and horribly imbalanced in terms of macronutrients. Yes, if you mostly eat uncooked whole grains and beans all day, you will have some problems. However, there’s no research to indicate that such antinutrients are a problem at normal intake levels and as a part of a properly balanced diet.

As you can see, while Paleo’s “approved foods” are quite alright, its blacklisted foods just don’t make sense.

One last little point I would like to address is the claims that you can lose weight on the Paleo Diet without having to count calories.

This is a bit misleading because the fact is weight loss requires a caloric deficit, regardless of how you get there in terms of actual food eaten.

Don’t believe me?

Check out this professor that lost 27 pounds by eating junk foods like Twinkies, Little Debbie snacks, and Doritos. How did he do that? Simply by regulating the AMOUNT of food he was eating (total daily calories), not WHAT.

I’ve worked with scores of people that weren’t losing weight on the Paleo Diet simply because they had no concept of how many calories they were actually eating.

The Bottom Line

While its historical foundations are flawed, the Paleo Diet has a lot going for it. It’s a hell of a lot healthier than the average person’s diet, and you can derive many health benefits from it.

The mistake many people make with Paleo is accepting its extremes, which simply aren’t scientifically defensible.

I actually eat fairly Paleo, because I enjoy meats, fruits, and vegetables. I also enjoy grains like rice, quinoa, and whole-grain pasta and bread, as well as a bit of dairy and legumes here and there.

Unsurprisingly, some of less dogmatic and better informed Paleo gurus like Mark Sisson advocate this “80/20” approach. That is, you mostly eat meats, veggies, fish, fruit, and nuts, but you include limited amounts of dairy, grains, legumes, and other “non-Paleo” foods as needed or desired.

What are your thoughts on the Paleo Diet? Have anything else you’d like to add? Let me know in the comments below!

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